


District Five Produces Power

by psijupiter (alicamel)



Series: Harry Potter and The Hunger Games Crossovers [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:43:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicamel/pseuds/psijupiter





	District Five Produces Power

...

The rules for the reaping are different in District Five. They watch the children carefully and remove them from the others, and the pool, once it becomes apparent that they no longer belong. Harry Potter is still waiting for his middle child to be removed from the pool. But this year Albus turned eleven, and he is eligible for the reaping.

...

District Fives produces power, the textbooks begin. The coal plants at the bottom of the valley are placed next to the river. The wires that cross the valley follow the train tracks out and go to the Capitol.

The textbook does not tell the whole story. There is another kind of power that only exists inside District Five. The village at the top of the hill produces crates of frivolous potions that change the colour of your skin; or heighten senses; or induce daydreams and infatuation. It's not always simple work, but it is always easy. Harry thinks more power lies inside him, going unused, wasted, forgotten.

Harry works alongside his partner to create a series of curses that can be activated as the game makers chose. He's proud of the work - it's creative and inventive. He likes watching the games and seeing what they've done in action, making notes about how to improve them.

He doesn't think about the children who suffer at his inventions. It'll never be his children, or so he thinks. 

His partner is less cheerful about the work, although she's good at it – better than Harry is. Hermione hates watching the games and avoids them where possible. She doesn't have kids of her own. She doesn't want to risk having children who will be like her parents, children without magic, children eligible for the games.

Harry's mother was like Hermione: a magical child born to non-magical parents, a left over slice of DNA from before the breeding rules were introduced. Harry's wife comes from a long line of magic, traced back to the first war. She's solid, like all the Weasleys – Harry never worried that his children would be left in the pool. There's not been a child born to a Wizarding family entered in the reaping for nearly twenty years. The last one was a boy called Remus Lupin. He still lives in the Victors Village, nursing the long scars of his body with homemade gin.

...

Children with magical powers would have an unfair advantage in the Games. That's the official line. Unofficially Harry knows that the Capitol doesn't want the general population to know about the existence of magic. Nor does it want to waste the rare gift by slaughtering children.

It's desperately unfair. Harry doesn't care. Lily kept a picture of her sister on the mantel piece, a small, narrow girl with eyes. When he was old enough to ask Lily told him she had died in the games. Lily had already been taken from her family, placed within the magical community and removed from the pool. She watched her sister die in the first five minutes of the game. 

Harry wants his children to be safe. He doesn't care about anyone else.

...

Thirty years ago, Tobias won the games and married a witch. The officials hated him for it and banned him, his wife and his newborn son, to a house halfway between the village at the top and the town at the bottom. When the son was fifteen Tobias and Eileen died in a freak accident on the road into town.

No visits Spinners End. Snape, no first name known, answers the door with a scowl. Albus, standing in front of Harry, pushes backwards against Harry's legs.

"Can you help me?" Harry asks.

Snape sneers at the boy. "Help you?"

Harry pushes Al forward. "He's entered in the reaping. He's not – he's not like them," Harry gestures behind him, towards the little people running about amongst the smog. "I want to you to prove it."

Snape gestures them in – sallow skin, ragged yellow nails. There's a tingle of magic around the door that Harry doesn't recognise. In the front room the walls are lined with books Harry's never seen, but he knows from the sight, sound and smell of them that these are magical books. Not the thin flimsy textbooks from his school, or the leaflets from his work, but deep, thick, heavy books filled with long-forgotten magic. 

"Well boy?" Snape snaps. "What have you to say?"

Albus steps closer to Harry but covers his insecurity by lifting his chin definitely. "I want to win," he tells the man. 

Harry clutches his fingers into Albus's shoulders. Snape regards the boy before forcing a twisted grin across his face. "Well. We can certainly arrange that."


End file.
